8:00 a.m.
Continental Breakfast & Networking

8:30 a.m.

Chairperson's Opening Of Day Two & Presentation:
How To Win Support For Your Social Media Initiatives

Early adopters of social media in government have demonstrated that the technology offers breakthrough performance in citizen engagement, service delivery and organizational effectiveness. But many stakeholders, especially at the senior level, don’t perceive opportunity in this new technology: they think about change and risk.

Winning support for social media initiatives, and positioning your organization to reap the rewards presented by this new technology, requires a solid understanding for the benefits of the tools, combined with a clear demonstration of how those benefits align with your organization’s objectives. How social media will deliver rewards for your organization must be captured in a plan, one that includes tactics for minimizing risk and maximizing opportunity.

During this session, you will learn to:

• Educate senior management about social media and the
  advantages of its implementation
• Link the tangible benefits to the specific needs of your organization
• Learn the basics of developing an implementation plan that links
  to your strategic objectives
• Case studies and best practices

Julian Mills, Vice President
PRESCIENT DIGITAL MEDIA

9:30 a.m.

Morning Refreshment & Networking Break

10:00 a.m.

Your Evolving Social Media Strategy: Integrating Online And Traditional Tools To Communicate With And Engage Your Audiences In An Ever-Changing Communications Environment

Social media has been around since the first wandering minstrels interacted with audiences to tell stories from around the country. Today social media is still telling stories about what is happening whether they are stories about people, companies, or governments. You can tap into that stream to tell your story and engage those who are talking about your world. Genome Alberta has been involved in social media to tell the story of science while rolling with changes in technology and openly shares the ups and downs of their experiences.

Genome Alberta is a not-for-profit research organization funded by the Provincial and Federal governments. They make extensive use of social media to raise awareness with the general public, reach key influencers, and engage the science community.

In this session, you will get some grounded tips based on what the organization has learned from developing their own unique Facebook application and using Twitter to create a 24 hour science newsroom.

Drawing from an extensive media and communications background while living where high speed Internet is something you only dream about, you will also leave this session with ideas on how to:

• Select the right social media course for your audience and for the task at hand
• Make efficient use of your content and resources
• Pull together both social and mainstream media in your communications strategy to get the best return on your communications dollar

Mike Spear, Director of Corporate Communications
GENOME ALBERTA

10:50 a.m.

Using Social Media To "Crowdsource" Solutions – An Efficient Way To Leverage The Creative Energy Of Your Community

Digital technologies are critical to almost every activity in our economy and society — whether it is e-commerce, social media, wireless data networks, or other parts of our daily lives. The digital economy is the network of suppliers and users of digital technologies that enable everyday life.

Led by Industry Canada, the federal government launched an online consultation in May 2010 to involve Canadians in the development of a digital economy strategy for Canada.

Working with Ascentum, Industry Canada developed a complementary suite of social media and public engagement tools. The foundation was an innovative website with YouTube videos by the Minister and a live stream of the consultation launch at Canada 3.0 Conference. The site hosted an Idea Form where participants could post, comment, rate and share ideas. There was also an extensive Twitter strategy used to build and engage community around the project.

The project was an example of a social media powered “crowdsourcing” approach, to engage the community in collaboratively generating ideas and prioritizing them for consideration and implementation.

• Using crowdsourcing technologies to leverage the creative energy of your user or stakeholder communities
• Engaging stakeholders and citizens using social media
• Monitoring and reacting to feedback and commentary on Twitter
• Analyzing consultation results from social media tools
• Preparing and releasing public consultation reports

Louise Baird, Director, Communications and Marketing Branch
James Lewis, Communications Advisor
David Louden, Manager, Communications and Marketing Branch
INDUSTRY CANADA

Joseph Peters, Partner
Ellis Westwood, Senior Consultant
ASCENTUM

Join a group of your colleagues for lunch with an informal discussion accompanied by one of our expert speakers. Take this opportunity to connect with others in a small, interactive group setting to network and brainstorm solutions to your most pressing social media concerns.

1:10 p.m.

Group Exercise – Let's Communicate And Collaborate!

You asked for it, you got it! Interact and discuss how to implement the latest technology tools to assist you in meeting your social media challenges with your fellow attendees and our experienced speakers. You will leave with new tools and ideas for more successfully applying best practices to your own Web 2.0 initiatives.

1:55 p.m.

Monitoring Social Media: Knowing When And How To Take Action While Getting The Most Out Of Your Budget

Firewalls... Technology policies... Flat-lined budgets... Fear of "the new"... For government communicators, these aren't just challenges to be surmounted on the road to enabling social media strategies — they are facts of life.

Your agency could spend a lot of time and money trying to push through a business case, or just accept reality and make do with what you have.

In this session, you will learn:

• How to use freely available web tools — such as Google’s News Search and Blog Search, Facebook’s and Twitter’s search features, and other readers and aggregators — to monitor conversations about your agency or your issues
• When to take action on what you find, and when to let sleeping Internet dogs lie
• Why all of this matters, and how to sell your bosses on the necessity of monitoring the Internet for chatter
  

You will also learn about the Workplace Safety and Insurance Board of Ontario and their direct experience with social media. Specifically, you will learn how they gained support from senior management and their technology group, and how they grind it out in the trenches every day, monitoring and tentatively engaging.

Finally, you will take away examples of case studies, sample policies, speaking points for use in conversations with your senior approvers, and the document that got them around the firewall and onto the social web.

Aaron Wrixon, Sr. Issues Analyst
WORKPLACE SAFETY AND INSURANCE BOARD

3:00 p.m.

The Importance Of Embracing A Culture Of Collaboration:
Lessons Learned For Improved Employee Communications

e-Collaboration is a major component of the Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade (DFAIT) Transformation Agenda. Since the fall of 2008, internal social media applications have allowed departmental staff to access and contribute information on any subject, from any location, in any time zone. The advent of these new internal applications has led to enhanced internal communication and employee networking, increased overall productivity and created a more transparent, modern and innovative work environment.

Over the past two years, the applications have been used for a variety of purposes ranging from everyday collaboration on policy or community discussion forums, to more extraordinary uses such as coordinating the departmental response to the earthquakes in Haiti and Chile and the Leadership Conference.

Specifically, this presentation will cover how DFAIT’s internal social media applications have:

• Evolved since the initial conception to their current state
• Complemented our knowledge management strategy
• Have been used to enhance collaboration and communication amongst employees

Courtney McIntyre, Research Instruction Librarian and Library Webmaster
FOREIGN AFFAIRS AND INTERNATIONAL TRADE CANADA

3:50 p.m.

How To Use Social Media Tools With Limited Financial Resources, But Still Achieve Your Goals

The Paul Yuzyk Award for Multiculturalism was created to recognize those who’ve made contributions to multiculturalism and diversity in Canada. Two challenges facing Citizenship and Immigration Canada (CIC) were promoting this award and encouraging submissions. With numerous priorities and tough economic times, an expensive media campaign was out of the question. Other challenges involved were that the specific scope of this award meant that only a select few Canadians were eligible, and how would CIC reach those eligible few?

Using Twitter, YouTube, outreach to bloggers and other efforts, CIC injected messages about the award and the nomination process into the social media space. This approach required a smaller financial outlay than a traditional print campaign, and allowed for “real time” monitoring of success as these messages spread. In the end, 88 nominations were received from across the country.

During this session, we will cover:

• The importance of relying on more than one channel in the social media space
• Tactics for coordinating several channels in the social media space
• How outreach to bloggers and stakeholders greatly enhances
  the reach of your message

Matthew Moore, Advisor, Social Media
Rob Wiebe, Senior Advisor, Web
CITIZENSHIP AND IMMIGRATION CANADA

4:40 p.m.
Chairperson's Recap:
Key Takeaways And What To Do When You Get Back To The Office

As a group, we'll recap the highlights and share key insights from the past two days.

Julian Mills, Vice President
PRESCIENT DIGITAL MEDIA